Evans Towne Center Park will be busy with arts and activities March 21-22 as Columbia County holds its first YUCHiKiOKEE Festival.

The inaugural festival was born from and replaces the former Columbus Day Festival held annually in October.

“We wanted to grow the festival,” said county Community Events Specialist Virginia Atkins.

But the festival was held in the heart of festival season and organizers faced stiff competition for vendors, entertainment and patrons, Atkins said. So the decision was made to move an arts-centered festival to the spring.

Columbia County officials allowed developers of a proposed water park near Grovetown to postpone a rezoning request scheduled to go before the Columbia County Planning Commission amid infrastructure concerns.

Planning Commission members agreed Thursday to table the rezoning until the April 2 meeting. Before the meeting, however, it appeared commission members might recommend against the rezoning based on concerns raised by county staff about the project.

Columbia County officials are going after property owners responsible for more than $130,000 in unpaid Stormwater Utility fees.

Stormwater Utility Manager Gary Bennett said the fees for many of the properties have been accumulating for years with unpaid bills reaching into hundreds of dollars. The county has a list of unpaid fees form more than 1,000 properties, which owe at least $30 and have not paid in a year. At least 300 of those property owners owe more than $300 and a handful owe more than $1,000, according to county records.

Clint Hardy has never met a stranger, which comes in handy in his job as a Columbia County Right-of-Way Specialist

Almost every day, Hardy knocks on doors of people he’s never met. But his friendly smile puts residents at ease and usually lands him on their sofa or in their kitchen as he explains the county’s newest improvement projects.

Hardy is one of four Property Acquisition employees who contact homeowners when property is needed for county projects such as water and sewer lines and stormwater and transportation improvements.

The following accounts were taken from Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident reports:

Woman says checks stolen

An Evans woman called authorities Monday after realizing her roommate used her checks to pay rent.

The woman said her roommate told her in early February that he was going to pay rent for that month. Upon checking her bank account, the woman said she realized her roommate stole two of her checks and paid the rent with one.

She couldn’t find the second check, so she had her bank put a stop on the second check.